Kagan Confirmation Debate Begins In The Senate
Click Here For Our Easy E-mail To Your Senators on Elena Kagan
First—the House voted to pass the anti-energy Oil Spill Bill last Friday on a 209 to 193 vote. That’s unfortunate, but a similar bill has j ust been pulled from the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). That’s because he doesn’t have the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and pass the bill. This means that your e-mails and phone calls have made an impact on your Senators and that we are pushing back successfully on one of the most important issues in this Congress!
Anti-energy legislation is now dead until after Labor Day when Congress returns. So we’re all going to need to get busy talking to our Senators and Representatives over the August recess. Tell them that we don’t need more bills to raise energy prices and pay off special interests with subsidies and mandates. In particular, we don’t need a national renewable electricity requirement that would raise electric rates in many States and drive even more manufacturing jobs overseas. (You can click here to see how your Representative voted.)
Second—we at Freedom Action want to be your “honest broker” in Washington. Therefore, we have to tell you that it’s more than likely that Elena Kagan will be confirmed by the Senate for the Supreme Court. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) began the Kagan debate on the Senate floor today.
So we can’t tell you that contacting your Senator will stop the confirmation of Elena Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court. However, we do th ink it’s important that your Senators hear from you. That will give Senators who vote No confidence that their constituents support them. And it will give Senators who vote Yes something to worry about. So you can click here to send an e-mail to your two Senators to tell them why you oppose (or support of course, if you support) Kagan’s confirmation. The e-mail letter includes many of the main points that have come up during her confirmation hearings. The list of objections is really the list of the broader conservative coalition. Freedom Action concentrates on economic freedom and limited government issues, so some of the social issues may be of concern to you, but are not officially of concern to Freedom Action. Here are a few of the major objections to Kagan serving on the Supreme Court:
One of Kagan’s most objectionable actions has been her manipulating science for political purposes. (References from Senate Republican Study Committee):
Kagan has also taken a very leftwing view of the First Amendment:
Kagan also knowingly defied a federal law:
Ms. Kagan has acknowledged that she spent “most” of her time in the Clinton Administration not serving “as an attorney” but instead working as a policy adviser. She has never been a judge and has little experience in the courtroom. And there is nothing in her background to show she can set aside her leftwing ideology and apply the Constitution and law as written to the cases and controversies that would come before her on the Supreme Court. When asked by Senators about times in her career when she appears to have chosen her political beliefs over objective readings of law and science, Ms. Kagan sought to excuse, minimize, or deny her actions. The Senate should deny confirmation of such a nominee.
Finally—we want to thank you for all of your efforts to defeat the anti-energy bills. American competitiveness and the world’s poor stand a fighting chance with people like you around!
First—the House voted to pass the anti-energy Oil Spill Bill last Friday on a 209 to 193 vote. That’s unfortunate, but a similar bill has j ust been pulled from the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). That’s because he doesn’t have the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and pass the bill. This means that your e-mails and phone calls have made an impact on your Senators and that we are pushing back successfully on one of the most important issues in this Congress!
Anti-energy legislation is now dead until after Labor Day when Congress returns. So we’re all going to need to get busy talking to our Senators and Representatives over the August recess. Tell them that we don’t need more bills to raise energy prices and pay off special interests with subsidies and mandates. In particular, we don’t need a national renewable electricity requirement that would raise electric rates in many States and drive even more manufacturing jobs overseas. (You can click here to see how your Representative voted.)
Second—we at Freedom Action want to be your “honest broker” in Washington. Therefore, we have to tell you that it’s more than likely that Elena Kagan will be confirmed by the Senate for the Supreme Court. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) began the Kagan debate on the Senate floor today.
So we can’t tell you that contacting your Senator will stop the confirmation of Elena Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court. However, we do th ink it’s important that your Senators hear from you. That will give Senators who vote No confidence that their constituents support them. And it will give Senators who vote Yes something to worry about. So you can click here to send an e-mail to your two Senators to tell them why you oppose (or support of course, if you support) Kagan’s confirmation. The e-mail letter includes many of the main points that have come up during her confirmation hearings. The list of objections is really the list of the broader conservative coalition. Freedom Action concentrates on economic freedom and limited government issues, so some of the social issues may be of concern to you, but are not officially of concern to Freedom Action. Here are a few of the major objections to Kagan serving on the Supreme Court:
One of Kagan’s most objectionable actions has been her manipulating science for political purposes. (References from Senate Republican Study Committee):
As an adviser to President Clinton, Ms. Kagan led efforts to keep the practice of partial-birth abortion legal. Confronted with a draft scientific statement from a medical association that contradicted her preferred policy position, she intervened and re-wrote that statement in a manner at odds with the association’s considered medical judgment but more congenial to her preferred policy goals.
Confronted at her hearing about this apparent politicizing of medical science, Ms. Kagan claimed that she -- a lay person with no medical training -- was merely helping the association more accurately state its own medical views. But the facts do not support that assertion. As former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop recently observed, “No published medical data supported her amendment in 1997, and none supports it today.” Dr. Koop considered Ms. Kagan’s role in this matter “unethical, and it is disgraceful, especially for one who would be tasked with being a measured and fair minded judge.”
Confronted at her hearing about this apparent politicizing of medical science, Ms. Kagan claimed that she -- a lay person with no medical training -- was merely helping the association more accurately state its own medical views. But the facts do not support that assertion. As former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop recently observed, “No published medical data supported her amendment in 1997, and none supports it today.” Dr. Koop considered Ms. Kagan’s role in this matter “unethical, and it is disgraceful, especially for one who would be tasked with being a measured and fair minded judge.”
Kagan has also taken a very leftwing view of the First Amendment:
As Solicitor General, Ms. Kagan and her office argued before the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case that the federal government -- despite the protections of the First Amendment -- possessed the power to ban political speech with which it disagrees, whether in the form of a video, a book, or a political pamphlet.
Kagan also knowingly defied a federal law:
As Dean of Harvard Law School, Ms. Kagan was confronted with the Solomon Amendment, a federal law requiring schools receiving federal funds to give equal access to military recruiters. Nonetheless, Ms. Kagan decided to deny the military access to Harvard’s on-campus recruiting program while the school was receiving taxpayer dollars. She did this in open defiance of the law, with the “hope” that the Defense Department would simply choose to not enforce it.
Ms. Kagan has acknowledged that she spent “most” of her time in the Clinton Administration not serving “as an attorney” but instead working as a policy adviser. She has never been a judge and has little experience in the courtroom. And there is nothing in her background to show she can set aside her leftwing ideology and apply the Constitution and law as written to the cases and controversies that would come before her on the Supreme Court. When asked by Senators about times in her career when she appears to have chosen her political beliefs over objective readings of law and science, Ms. Kagan sought to excuse, minimize, or deny her actions. The Senate should deny confirmation of such a nominee.
Finally—we want to thank you for all of your efforts to defeat the anti-energy bills. American competitiveness and the world’s poor stand a fighting chance with people like you around!
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